KIRKESBY, William

The identification of Kirkesby, one of just two men to represent Bletchingley more than once in Henry VI’s reign, presents some problems, not least since there were a number of namesakes active at the period. In the absence of an obvious local candidate it seems that like many of his fellow Members for Bletchingley he was a professional lawyer who made a living as an attorney in the Westminster law courts. The origins of the man in question are uncertain, but he was accredited in the court of common pleas by 1402 at the latest, and, while he served clients from different parts of the realm, the focus of his career remained in the south-east.1 CP40/567, att. rot. 6; 572, rot. 272d; 582, rots. 132d, 216. By the later years of Henry V he was regularly employed by members of the Surrey county gentry, like Alice, the widow of Ralph de Cuddington†,2 CP40/647, rot. 186. and the Southwark gentlemen William Moyle I* and Thomas Clere.3 CP40/635, rot. 386d; 651, rot. 478d. In the 1420s the men who employed him included Londoners like the executors of Richard Marlow† and Richard Whittington†, the drapers John Wyot and Nicholas Bromflete, the mercers Reynold Strete and Everard Flete* and the grocer John Mitchell I* (the latter two also being Members of the Parliament of 1426) and later the Guildford lawyer Richard Combe*.4 CP40/647, rot. 115d; 656, rots. 108d, 145, 372, 460d; 667, rot. 327d; 699, rot. 270.

The life of an attorney in the law courts was not without its pitfalls, as Kirkesby discovered in the spring of 1433. Two years earlier he had appeared in the common bench as attorney for two Dartmouth merchants, Hugh Yon* and Nicholas Stebbing*, whom Robert Hill I* accused of an incursion into his property at Shilston. After a procedural delay the case was heard at the Exeter assizes of March 1433, when Stebbing was acquitted, but Yon and his wife were found guilty of the offence, and condemned to pay £200 damages. Yet Hill was unable to recover these damages from Yon, as it was now discovered that Kirkesby did not in fact hold a warrant of attorney from Stebbing, and he consequently began litigation against the hapless lawyer for the greater sum of £300.5 CP40/689, rot. 121.

It is probable that the lawyer may also be identified with the London ‘gentleman’ who was a feoffee of property in Kensington and Chelsea in the 1420s, and who served as a commissioner of sewers in December 1433.6 CCR, 1422-9, pp. 55, 65; CPR, 1429-36, p. 350. The date of his death has not been discovered, but on chronological grounds it seems probable that it was a namesake who served as an attorney to a string of individuals from the Midlands in the 1440s, 50s and 60s.7 J.H. Baker, Men of Ct. (Selden Soc. supp. ser. xviii), ii. 969.